Who are Pussy Riot?

Studies at Russia's Moscow State University and has a daughter with her husband Pyotr Verzilov

Member of the controversial Voina (War) performance art group

Compared her hearing to the tribunals Stalin used to conduct his bloody political purges in the 1930s

Maria Alyokhina

Single mother of a five-year-old son and a member of Greenpeace

Is reportedly religious and only protesting against the church's open backing for Mr Putin

Yekaterina Samutsevich

Physics graduate who worked on designing software for the Nerpa class nuclear submarine

Left to study photography and eventually graduated from a Moscow multimedia centre

Member of the Voina performance art group

Forced to stand for nearly three hours as the verdict was read out, the women swayed with fatigue and closed their eyes at times.

They exchanged a few quick smiles as they heard the verdict.

Tolokonnikova had told Novaya Gazeta newspaper in an interview ahead of the verdict that she was not afraid of being sent to a prison colony because "there are great people everywhere".

"We think the trial itself was a farce and its verdict was like the culmination of the farce," lawyer Mark Feigin told journalists afterwards.

The once-unheralded band members - two of them mothers - have already been held in pre-trial detention for five months despite international protests about their treatment.

The group's backers burst into chants of "shame" outside the Moscow courthouse and said the case showed Mr Putin's refusal to tolerate dissent in his new six-year term as president.

"This verdict was written by Vladimir Putin," Alexei Navalny, one of the organisers of the protests, said outside the court.

Dozens were detained as tensions rose and scuffles broke out.

Outside Russia, public sympathy grew as the trial reached its climax, with events held in more than 50 cities worldwide aimed at putting pressure on the Russian government and judicial system to set the women free.

In the Bulgarian capital Sofia, brightly coloured balaclavas similar to those worn by Pussy Riot members were placed over the heads of bronze statues at a Soviet Army monument, but were quickly removed.

Rallies also took place in Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne.

Protest organiser Ray Lalotoa from My Sydney Riot says Pussy Riot should have a right to free speech.

"Young people should be free to express how they feel,' he said.

"It should be a right for every human being to express that they're upset about a situation with the government."